TAUNTON - From the mouth of an older man enrolled in a drug and alcohol recovery program came words of such compassion and humanity, the Rev. Curtis Dias still remembers them nearly 30 years later.

When Dias’ ministry van passed a group of prostitutes near the Holland Tunnel in New York City, the young men said disdainfully, “Look at those hoes. Look at those hoes,” Dias said.

But the older man said quietly, “They’re not hoes. They’re somebody’s daughters.”

“I touch the untouchables. I reach the unreachable,” Dias said last week.

“I deal with fourth world people,” said Dias, who grew up in the former DeWert Avenue public housing complex in Taunton.

“They are the drug addicts, the alcoholics, the prostitutes. People think they are the scum of the Earth. But in my eyes, they’re not hoes or crack heads or thieves. They’re somebody’s sons and daughters,” he said.

In 1996, the Taunton Daily Gazette did a front-page story about how Dias, 57, overcame his own addiction to drugs and alcohol to become the minister of Calvary Pentecostal Church in East Freetown.

More than 20 years later, he’s still sober and drug-free and still the pastor at the same church.

And amid the depths of the opioid crisis gripping the city and the nation, Dias thought it would be a good time to share his story once again.

“I thought maybe with the epidemic and people dying, it might be time to bring that message back. There’s still hope for the hopeless,” Dias said last week.

Dias grew up in a “loving, wonderful family,” he said. He and his eight brothers and sisters were happy and secure. His parents both had good jobs and made sure the whole family went to church every Sunday, he said.

Before it was torn down several years ago, the former Fairfax Gardens on DeWert Avenue had a reputation as a depressing, drug and violence-riddled inner city housing project. But it was nothing like that when Dias was growing up, he said.

He remembers it as an attractive, close-knit neighborhood, a welcoming place, the kind where parents kept an eye on each other’s children.

But even that strong foundation couldn’t protect him when he started experimenting with drugs and alcohol, he said.

Dias, who struggled in school because of dyslexia, dropped out of Taunton High School at the age of 16. And as he began drinking more and more heavily, he wasn’t able to hold down a job and began getting in trouble for stealing to support his habit.

He had left home by then, ashamed and determined not to let his parents see him drunk, he said.

Then in 1986, high on alcohol and cocaine, he had an epiphany.

“At 3 a.m. in the projects I felt God say, ‘You can be a better man than this’ and I seized the moment,” Dias said.

No one took him seriously. But he was dead serious.

A month later, he enrolled in the Youth Challenge Training Center, a Christian drug and alcohol program in New Jersey.

That was 31 years ago, and he hasn’t had a drink or taken drugs since.

“I tried AA, NA, CA – they’re all good programs but it didn’t work for me. Then the DA tried me. Then I tried God,” Dias said.

He went on to get his GED and later returned to Youth Challenge as a head administrator. He made the dean’s list at Trinity University in Illinois. He’s been married 20 years. His wife is a registered nurse and they have a daughter in college.

“My wife’s never seen me drink, smoke or do pills. She thinks I have a halo. I do have a halo. It’s just a little crooked,” Dias said.

He is self-effacing on purpose.

Dias, whose nickname is Coco, wants people to know no matter how low they may feel they have sunk that there is always a way to climb back out of that hole.

“I say to them, ‘If God can help out Coco, he can help anyone.’ I was so low I had to look up to see the bottom of my sneakers. God uses the weak to confound the wise,” Dias said.

When he sees someone struggling, he doesn’t see a failure. He sees a fellow human being who is suffering and thinks “There but for the grace of God” – only he means it literally.

In addition to being pastor at Calvary Pentecostal Church in East Freetown, he has also worked with prisoners for many years as a mentor at the Ash Street jail in New Bedford doing prison ministry for the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office.

He also volunteers at the Department of Youth Services at Taunton State Hospital through Straight Ahead Ministries, a national organization that goes into prisons to work with high-risk juvenile offenders.

And he continues to work with them when they are released to help them get a job or a driver’s license or social services – to give them a strong enough foundation that they have something to build on.

Dias also founded the New Bedford chapter of Celebrate Recovery 11 years ago and holds meetings every Tuesday night for people wrestling with addictions of all kinds at Thy Kingdom Come Church.

“Freely you receive, freely you give. God’s been very good to me. You can’t pay me for the work I do and the things God has taught me. How can you put a price on the soul and the individual? We’re priceless,” he said.

Over the years, Dias has worked with inmates in solitary confinement, in “the hole.” Instead of bars, they are behind a big metal door that slides back and forth.

He has to bend down to talk to them face-to-face through the meal slot or lean in to speak to them through the crack on the side of the door.

But that’s exactly what they need, some human contact, so that’s exactly what he does.

It’s a privilege to kneel down to minister to people, to serve them, to help lift them up, he said.

“I don’t need to go back to the fourth world. I’m debt free. I’ve traveled the world. But I go back because I believe the guys behind the walls have potential,” he said.

“I go behind the walls,” he said.

Dias has come to believe solitary confinement usually does more harm than good. The goal is to rehabilitate people, not break them.

“I ask people all the time ‘Are we making men or monsters?’ The majority will be coming back to society. I choose to make them men,” Dias said.

It’s a misconception that anyone is worthless and irredeemable, he said.

“The misconception is they are junkies or scum of the world. It’s only one aspect of who they are. When I find fourth world people, they’re kind and compassionate when they are clean and sober,” he said.

Some people have called him the “pastor of the city,” the “pastor of gang members,” of outcasts of the hopeless, Dias said.

He ministers to them not to encourage them to continue to live that way, just the opposite.

“I don’t believe, ‘once an alcoholic always an alcoholic, once a drug addict always a drug addict.’ I think they can be something great,” Dias said.

When Dias is walking down the street and encounters someone playing an instrument, maybe a saxophone, with a cup out for money, he never says to himself, “Get a job” or “You get what you deserve.”

No, instead, he puts a few dollars in the cup.

“I say, ‘Do me a favor. Play me a little ‘Amazing Grace’ and it echoes all around,” Dias said.

Over the years of working with people struggling with addiction and “some of the roughest and toughest gang members” in Taunton and New Bedford, Dias has had many occasions to rejoice.

“I have tons of successes. I have people who reconcile with their families, go back to school, establish businesses and really excel,” Dias said.

“There is life after addiction. These people have great potential. They’re very intelligent. They use addiction as a pacifier because they have so much hurt and pain. There’s a better way. You don’t have to die. You can live,” he said.

And he’s also all too often found himself officiating at funerals for young men and women lost to overdoses or violence.

The funeral is not for the person who died. It’s for their grief-stricken families – their parents who can still see the wide-eyed, laughing little children they once knew.

“I tell the truth. Everyone knows what killed them,” he said.

“I say, ‘I want you to know God knew him before he even came out of his mother’s womb and took his first breath and his last breath. He was unique, special, one of kind. No one will ever have the same fingerprints or DNA or walk or talk like him. And not only did God know him, God loved him,” Dias said.

To contact Dias about addiction counseling or any other matter, call Calvary Pentecostal Church in East Freetown at 508-763-8343 or look him up on Facebook.